Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

While marching through a
region, the black troops would sometimes pause at a plantation, ascertain
from the slaves the name of the "meanest" overseer in the neighborhood,
and then, if he had not fled, "tie him backward on a horse and force him
to accompany them." Although a few masters and overseers were whipped
or strung up by a rope in the presence of their slaves, this appears to have
been a rare occurrence. More commonly, black soldiers preferred to apportion
the contents of the plantation and the Big House among those whose
labor had made them possible, singling out the more "notorious" slaveholders
and systematically ransacking and demolishing their dwellings. "They
gutted his mansion of some of the finest furniture in the world," wrote
Chaplain Henry M. Turner, in describing a regimental action in North
Carolina. Having been informed of the brutal record of this slaveholder, the
soldiers had resolved to pay him a visit. While the owner was forced to look
on, they went to work on his "splendid mansion" and "utterly destroyed
every thing on the place." Wielding their axes indiscriminately, they shattered
his piano and most of the furniture and ripped his expensive carpets
to pieces. What they did not destroy they distributed among his slaves.
--Leon F. Littwack, Been in the Storm So Long
Yet, these slaves had enormous power in their hands.
Simply by stopping work, they could threaten the Confederacy
with starvation. By walking into the Federal
camps, they showed to doubting Northerners the easy
possibilities of using them as workers and as servants, as
farmers, and as spies, and finally, as fighting soldiers. And
not only using them thus, but by the same gesture depriving
their enemies of their use in just these fields. It was the
fugitive slave who made the slaveholders face the alternative
of surrendering to the North, or to the Negroes."
Judge John C. Underwood of Richmond,
Virginia, testified later before Congress that: "I had a conversation
with one of the leading men in that city, and he
said to me that the enlistment of Negro troops by the
United States was the turning point of the rebellion; that it
was the heaviest blow they ever received. He remarked that
when the Negroes deserted their masters, and showed a
general disposition to do so and join the forces of the
United States, intelligent men everywhere saw that the
matter was ended. "(43)
The U.S. Empire took advantage of this rising
against the Slave Power to conquer the Confederacy - but
now its occupying Union armies had to not only watch
over the still sullen and dangerous Confederates, but had
to prevent the Afrikan masses from breaking out. Four
millions strong, the Afrikan masses were on the move 38
politically. Unless halted, this rapid march could quickly
lead to mass armed insurrection against the Union and the
formation of a New Afrikan government in the South.
Events had suddenly moved to that point.
The most perceptive settlers understood this very
well. The Boston capitalist Elizur Wright said in 1865:
"...the blacks must be enfranchised or they will be ready
and willing to fight for a government of their own. " Note,
"a government of their own. " For having broken the back
of the Confederacy, having armed and trained themselves
contrary to settler expectations, the Afrikan masses were in
no mood to passively submit to reenslavement. And they
desired and demanded Land, the national foundations that
they themselves had created out of the toil of three hundred
years. DuBois tells us: "There was continual fear of
insurrection in the Black Belt. This vague fear increased
toward Christmas, 1866. The Negroes were disappointed
because of the delayed division of lands. There was a
natural desire to get possession of firearms, and all
through the summer and fall, they were acquiring
shotguns; muskets, and pistols, in great quantities."
All over their Nation, Afrikans had seized the land
that they had sweated on. Literally millions of Afrikans
were on strike in the wake of the Confederacy's defeat.
The Southern economy - now owned by Northern Capital
- was struck dead in its tracks, unable to operate at all